Given the source material, Oliver Stone’s kinetic version of Don Winslow’s crackling crime thriller “Savages” should be a little bit Quentin Tarantino, a little bit Elmore Leonard. It even boasts a near vintage John Travolta turn.

But ever the moralist (and we’re not complaining), Stone brings a severity to a battle of wills between a Mexican drug cartel honcho (Salma Hayek) and two Laguna Beach weed dealers and their lady love that makes the onscreen violence more real but the ride less satisfying.

If you read, seen or heard anything about Tom Cruise’s rock-star pose in “Rock of Ages,” then you’re ready to revisit his comparatively brief, comparably lunatic turn in “Tropic Thunder.”

Ben Stiller’s making-of-a-war-flick comedy is tonight’s Film on the Rocks offering at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. A Tom Collins provides the tunes. Show kicks off at 6:45. Movie launches at dusk. Can’t make it that short distance to a glorious place, here’s a taste of the wonderfully tasteless (warning: rap song here, no bleeps).

But when it opened with Oklahoma girl Sherrie Christain singing Night Ranger’s “Sister Christain,” I couldn’t help thinking as sweet as it is — all those other passengers chiming in, just like a real musical!– that it didn’t hold a candle to Paul Thomas Anderson’s incendiary scene in “Boogie Nights.”

As it continues to build its coffers for restoration of the storied, 121-year-old theater , the organization behind Historic Elitch Theatre kicks off its summer film series Friday. In a savvy twist, the series will highlight films starring Elitch Theatre alumni.

Friday night, June 15, “A Star is Born” screens. No, not the 1954 version of the tale of a rising actress and her crumbling mentor/lover. That one starred Judy Garland and James Mason. And not the 1976 remake starring Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.

Proving how “Twilight” really is a contemporary soap opera, team “Twilight” and our friends at Entertainment Weekly magazine have a few pictures of the vampire couple and their little one, Renesmee. Only she isn’t so little. Daytime TV has always been good at accelerating (and slowing) at will the age of youngsters.

Baby’s just aren’t that intriguing, except to their parents. How doting Bella and Edward C. were, we may never know. Eleven-year-old Mackenzie Foy portrays Bella and Edward’s half-human/half vampire/oft craving daughter in “Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2.” The final chapter in the saga opens Nov. 16, a few days after Foy’s 12th birthday. Not a bad present.

“When pigs fly” is not a turn of phrase you want to be tossing around today. Because this evening at dusk, the loud, proud, often defiant porker Miss. Piggy will show you.

The full-figured muppet, as well as Kermit and Fozzie Bear plan on dropping in on (literally but gently) Alamo Drafthouse’s rebranding of the Aspen Grove Free Family Film Series. The Austin-based film exhibitor and distributor decided to partner with Aspen Grove Shopping Center, which already hosted an outdoor fest, as a way of introducing itself to the Denver-area community.

Agnieszka Holland’s unflinching, unerring Holocaust drama relates the true story of a sewer worker who discovers a group of Jews hiding in the tunnels beneath the Polish town of Lvov. Mad Moviegoer first saw the film at the Telluride Film Festival.

Each year, the Labor Day-weekend affair makes a habit of showing some of the finest films from indie distributor Sony Pictures Classics. “In Darkness” went on to became a nominee for the best foreign-language film Oscar. Holland and screenwriter David F. Shamoon capture the moral murkiness of survival even as it depicts one man’s improbable journey toward decency.

This Travis Betz trailer came by way of Keith M, one of our ace IT managers, a movie aficianado and lover of turtles. While not quite as amusing as the “Dark Knight Rises/Lion King” mashup trailer, it’s pretty darn remarkable.

Where do people find the time? Forget “Prometheus,” that’s the real space-time quandary.

Lisa Kennedy has been The Denver Post film critic for quite a spell. The job returned her to the town she grew up in after 20 years of living elsewhere: mostly in New York City. During the time she's been back, she was voted into the National Society of Film Critics, a first for a Colorado reviewer. When she began Diary of a Mad Moviegoer, she wasn't just cribbing from Tyler Perry. In fact, she seldom goes all Madea on movies, thinking the gig is more like a conversation than a competition about who's right about which flick.